GIF adventures in Game Journalism: Russ Pitts Goes Home

Sometimes, the output of the games press is such inane drivel as to not be worth the expenditure of mental energy needed to reply with words. Sometimes, an image will suffice. These are those adventures.

In this first installment, Polygon’s Russ Pitts writes a creeper manifesto under the guise of praise for Fullbright Company’s Gone Home, a title marketed as a haunted house simulator which ends up containing no paranormal elements or meaningful game mechanics at all, only a self-indulgent marathon of navel gazing re: teenage lesbian angst in the 1990s. (Not even kidding.) Excerpts follow.

“In the years since leaving my grandfather’s house, I’ve had many careers and adventures, one of which was as an instructor at a Catholic girl’s college outside of Boston in the early 2000s. There was a strict rule at this college against staff members dating the students, and it was a very good rule. I never broke it.“

“Instead I maintained an emotional distance and learned to appreciate the young women I taught there for who they were to themselves and each other, and not for what they might be to me.”

“I came to know them as people first, women second, and derived immense joy from helping some of them find their way, when I could, and simply observing the rest as they blundered toward joy.”

“There’s no secret to why a no-dating rule would be necessary: This is the period in most young women’s lives in which they’re discovering that they’re actually women, and forgetting that they were girls.”

“They are full of life and energy, none of it focused, all of it overwhelming. They’re just beginning to understand their power and find their ways in the world. It’s intoxicating to be around, even at a distance.”

“Seeing the character of Sam in Gone Home, and exploring her life in snippets captured from a writing assignment here, or a diary entry there, I found myself remembering the many lives that have touched me in similar, and similarly scattershot, ways. I saw, in Sam, a handful of the young women I once knew, and I relived the pain and the drama of their own awakenings, as I had been given the privilege to observe, and experienced again the elation of their eventual happinesses.”

Do keep in mind that all the quotes above were taken from, ostensibly, a piece about video games. See you next time, folks!